If Think You Think Computers are Complicated Now... Just Wait
- Date: 2007-09-13 - Word Count: 398
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Looking back over the last 20 years of home computing, it's hard to comprehend how we managed to cope without our PCs. Starting from computers such as the weird ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64, the modern PC has become a normal part of daily life.
Despite its massively successful integration into the average home, a huge number of adults are still baffled by the home computer. Looking into the future, the problem doesn't seem like it's going to have a solution on the horizon anytime soon.
The key difficulty that I have seen people struggle with involves short term memory of the user. Remembering how to navigate around the operating system on any platform requires an extensive amount of knowledge. To younger users they have no problem at all learning new software and being able to navigate from short term memory as and when they need it.
With age, people often lose their short term memory and this makes adapting to our ever changing computers a massive challenge. In a recent survey over half of people aged 65 years or older in the UK were voluntarily excluding themselves from using the internet. This is the writing on the wall. The younger generation values the internet so greatly that they could not cope without it; the elderly generations find using the internet so complicated, they are willing to forfeit these benefits.
As the baby boom generation approaches retirement there seems to be no let up in the constant stream of new programs and operating systems to learn. Just as they get used to the way their computer works the darn thing changes, and you have to learn it all over again. For a younger person this is not seen as a problem but as progress. For someone who has short term memory problems it is evidently asking too much of them.
The solution so far seems to be team work. The grandparents actually do make use of the internet, but they do so indirectly through their relatives. On reflection it could be argued that exclusion on one level leads to inclusion at another. So in a way perhaps this is not such a bad thing after all.
Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to significantly speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can eliminate slow boot times today and transform your really slow computer.
Despite its massively successful integration into the average home, a huge number of adults are still baffled by the home computer. Looking into the future, the problem doesn't seem like it's going to have a solution on the horizon anytime soon.
The key difficulty that I have seen people struggle with involves short term memory of the user. Remembering how to navigate around the operating system on any platform requires an extensive amount of knowledge. To younger users they have no problem at all learning new software and being able to navigate from short term memory as and when they need it.
With age, people often lose their short term memory and this makes adapting to our ever changing computers a massive challenge. In a recent survey over half of people aged 65 years or older in the UK were voluntarily excluding themselves from using the internet. This is the writing on the wall. The younger generation values the internet so greatly that they could not cope without it; the elderly generations find using the internet so complicated, they are willing to forfeit these benefits.
As the baby boom generation approaches retirement there seems to be no let up in the constant stream of new programs and operating systems to learn. Just as they get used to the way their computer works the darn thing changes, and you have to learn it all over again. For a younger person this is not seen as a problem but as progress. For someone who has short term memory problems it is evidently asking too much of them.
The solution so far seems to be team work. The grandparents actually do make use of the internet, but they do so indirectly through their relatives. On reflection it could be argued that exclusion on one level leads to inclusion at another. So in a way perhaps this is not such a bad thing after all.
Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to significantly speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can eliminate slow boot times today and transform your really slow computer.
Related Tags: computer, learning, literacy, elderly
Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can have dramatically more PC speed today from your slow computer. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles
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